North American media, rambunctiously free in critically examining domestic issues, usually toe the government line on foreign policies. They act as state propagandists, as we saw on Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq, at least in the initial phases of the conflicts. We are seeing it now on Iran, which to the U.S. and Israel is the new evil empire. The media dutifully portray it so, demonizing it and excoriating all its leaders, not just the crude and rude Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Thus, the current condescension toward Hassan Rouhani, the newly elected president.

We are told his manners are impeccable, he smiles, he speaks softly and says all the right things but can we trust this cunning bazaari? He’s a “smooth operator” on “a charm offensive” to “soften the image” of a harsh regime, which is opaque and unfathomable to the civilized West.

In this cacophony, there’s little reporting. Who is Rouhani? What all is he saying? Does he speak for himself or the multi-faceted regime in Tehran?

He is the most powerful elected politician since the 1979 Islamic revolution. For 40 years he has been a friend of Ayatollah Syed Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, who makes all the key decisions. He was also a confidante of the first supreme leader and architect of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

There’s nothing higher in the Iranian hierarchy than working for “the two Big K’s,” Khomeini and Khamenei.

But he is less of an ideologue than either. He is cast in the mould of the “Third K,” former president Mohammed Khatami, an urbane intellectual who had lived in Germany and who tried, unsuccessfully, to moderate both domestic and foreign policies.

Rouhani trained as a cleric under Khomeini in the holy city of Qom. He studied in Scotland and taught in England. He was headed to Harvard for graduate studies when the revolution drew him back home.

He wrote six books, on theology to public policy. Like popes John Paul and Benedict, he mourned the West’s increasing godlessness. He called Israel “the axis of all anti-Iranian activities,” not the axis of evil, as George W. Bush was to call Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq.

His pragmatism asserted itself during Saddam Hussein’s war on Iran (1980-88). In 1986, Rouhani was one of three people Ronald Reagan’s envoy Robert McFarlane secretly met in Tehran to arrange the complicated arms deal that later blew up as the Iran-Contra affair.

Saddam used chemical weapons, a crime the U.S. turned a blind eye to, but which scarred the Iranians. Rouhani cited that recently in condemning the use of chemical weapons by Syria’s Bashar Assad, even though Iran is one of Assad’s chief backers.

Rouhani was the founding secretary of the National Security Council, reporting to the ayatollah on foreign and nuclear policies. In 1991, he opposed Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. In 2001, he mourned 9/11. In 2003, as chief nuclear negotiator he got Khamenei to sign off on Iran suspending nuclear enrichment. The deal lasted two years. None has been found yet to replace it. During the Ahmadinejad years (2005-13), Rouhani was sidelined.

In this year’s election, he emerged the clear winner on the first ballot, promising to address people’s immediate concerns — fix the sinking economy (inflation 42 per cent, oil exports down 40 per cent over last year, etc.), lift restrictions on the Internet, reduce censorship of the media, release dissidents, grant greater individual freedoms, and repair the relationship with the West to help reduce or lift economic sanctions.

He has named a like-minded, well-connected pragmatist as foreign minister. Javad Zarif studied and lived in the U.S. for 30 years, including as Iran’s envoy to the United Nations. In 2003, he was by Rouhani’s side in that nuclear deal. Post-9/11, he helped the U.S. with Iranian intelligence to help topple the Afghan Taliban, whom Iran despised long before the West.

Zarif has distanced the new administration from Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust.

Both Rouhani, 64, and Zarif, 53, are keen to resume nuclear talks, last held in April. Ayatollah Khamenei publicly blessed them last month and recently let the nuclear file be moved from his office to Zarif’s.

At the UN on Tuesday, Rouhani reasserted his readiness to negotiate.

“Iran poses absolutely no threat to the world or the region . . .

“Nuclear weapon and other weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran’s security and defence doctrine and contradict our fundamental religious and ethical convictions. Our national interests make it imperative that we remove any and all reasonable concerns about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”

Tehran was prepared to engage “immediately in time-bound and result-oriented talks to build mutual confidence and remove mutual uncertainties with full transparency.”

He acknowledged that sanctions are hurting, not so much the political elite but rather “the common people.”

For his part, Barack Obama did well to say that the U.S. is “not seeking regime change” and that “we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy.” He noted that “the supreme leader has issued a fatwah against the development of nuclear weapons.” And that Rouhani, too, has reiterated that Iran will never develop a nuclear weapon.

There has never been a moment like this between the U.S. and Iran since 1979. It needs to be seized on.

Obama, forever keen to protect his right flank, will have to find the courage to dismiss those who want permanent warfare against Iran. These include many in Congress, who demand ever-tougher sanctions, ignoring the reality that 34 years of them have not forced Iran to roll over.

Iran will not give up its right to process uranium for peaceful purposes. It will not stop seeing Israel’s nuclear arsenal as the biggest threat to the Middle East, not its own nascent nuclear program.

It is hurting under sanctions but it is not helpless. It has just signed a four-year $14.8-billion deal with Iraq to supply natural gas. India and Turkey remain oil and gas customers, through barter arrangements.

Stephen Harper, who has been an echo chamber for hawks on Iran, has dealt Canada out of a useful role. When Obama wrote a confidential letter to Rouhani, it was delivered through the Swiss embassy in Tehran. That was a role our embassy used to play. But Harper closed it down last year and cut off all relations with Iran. No more Argo — the 1979-80 sanctuary provided to American diplomats in the home of our then ambassador Ken Taylor and the spiriting them out of Tehran on Canadian passports was an act of heroism that benefitted Canada for years in our bilateral relations.